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Fox visit could enliven debate on immigration

Mexican president who tends to speak freely will stop in 3 U.S. states

10:16 PM CDT on Monday, May 22, 2006
By LAURENCE ILIFF / The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY – A wild card is being thrown into this week’s already volatile U.S. Senate debate over illegal immigration: Mexican President Vicente Fox’s swing through three states in the American West beginning Tuesday.

Mr. Fox will likely keep his head down as he travels to Salt Lake City, Seattle, Sacramento and Los Angeles from Tuesday to Friday, analysts and aides said. He will meet with mayors and governors, including Arnold Schwarzenegger of California.

But given that the president is known to shoot from the hip during interviews and that his near-fluent English is often less nuanced than his native Spanish, there could be trouble.

The president’s spokesman, Rubén Aguilar, said Monday that one purpose of the trip is “to promote the immigration reform that is now being discussed in the United States Senate.”

But a slip-up could have the exact opposite effect, analysts said, and some immigrants said they don’t want Mr. Fox’s help.

“This is one time when I will beg him not to stick his foot in his mouth,” said Juventino Arreola Sánchez, a construction worker passing through Ciudad Juárez on his way to Boulder, Colo. “Sometimes he makes things more complicated for us.”

Mr. Fox has shifted his tone in recent days from tacit acceptance of walls and National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexico border to criticism.

“The construction of walls, the construction of barriers along the border, is not an effective response for a relationship between friends, neighbors and partners. It is not an effective response to guarantee security in the region,” Mr. Fox said last week in Mexicali.

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry sent a “diplomatic note” last week expressing concerns about the new security measures, although the text of the note was not divulged.

With a presidential campaign heading into its final month at home, Mr. Fox will try to look like a tough defender of Mexico without angering Americans.

His success or failure could have an effect on the presidential candidate from Mr. Fox’s National Action Party, Felipe Calderón, who is barely in first place, analysts said.

“Whatever takes place, Fox, in a way, has Calderón’s fate in his hands,” said Larry Birns, head of the Council on Foreign Affairs research group in Washington.

Although Fox aides point out that the trip has been in the works for two years and was postponed once, Mr. Birns said the timing puts Mr. Fox in the position of returning to Mexico triumphant if the Senate passes a comprehensive bill this week.

That, however, may be wishful thinking.

“The prospects that he’s going to get a net win out of this are pretty remote,” Mr. Birns said.

E-mail liliff@dallasnews.com